


Beauty (nonsignificant)

by Helicidae



Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-05-22
Updated: 2011-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helicidae/pseuds/Helicidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock doesn't particularly mind having to stay in the house of a cursed monster.  It was, after all, painfully dull back in his village, and this Beast is so very interesting.</p><p>John's only wondering which deity he offended so much - what with the shoulder, the curse, and now this maddening, insane man he's meant to fall in love with.  Beauty and the Beast crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt: http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/9100.html?thread=42644876#t42644876
> 
> With the wonderful Savingcolours on Livejournal as beta.

The gate swung open at the barest of touches and Sherlock stood for a long moment to survey the house in front of him.  Nothing appeared to be happening even at this blatant intrusion - nothing but birds in the garden, the windows empty and dark - and he wondered what would transpire if he merely turned and walked away now, made his way back through the forest and caught the next bus to London.  Nothing to him, he was sure, at least not unless it was Mycroft tracking him down because of the messy death their father would supposedly suffer were he not to turn himself in.

Sherlock considered it, lingering in the open gateway.  It _was_ tempting, even purely if to see if Mycroft could find him (almost definitely, the question was really how long it would take).  Mycroft was curiously fond of their father, after all, and likely wouldn’t take his death without some negative reaction.  That or he would merely hunt down and bump off this so called Beast instead, before anyone could touch their father, and save the family this whole mess.  That was more likely.

For all that he disliked his father - embarrassingly slow, too easy to be taken advantage of, too transparent in his near daily wishing for two _normal_ sons - Sherlock hardly wanted the man dead.  People (Mycroft excluded, but then Mycroft was almost always excluded when talking about _people_ ) barely seemed to understand that just because he didn’t wish flowers and rainbows on every plebeian acquaintance didn’t mean that he wished for the opposite, unless the opposite happened to be them leaving him alone.  And yet, while the easy way out was to let his brother remove the Beast shaped problem without getting his own hands dirty, Sherlock found himself oddly unhappy at the thought.  Stories of these creature-types that enslaved humans, ate them or raped them dead aside, he didn’t particularly want the Beast killed any more than he did his father. 

And besides: he rather liked getting his hands dirty.  

Meandering up the garden path, a couple of birds shrilled their alarm and flew away.  The gravel crunched loudly as he walked.  And yet, still no signs of any intelligent life, at least none that indicated a presence here and now.  There were footprints on the front step: many, most of them old, but only two sets.  One was his father’s - the sole shape and size along with the stride pattern was easily recognised at first glance.  The other was something approximating a very, very large dog, but not quite.  There were the clear four toes with claws and a middle pad, but they were more merged than the discrete dog’s paw-print, and were all the wrong shape.  They also were rather obviously made by something that walked on two legs only.  Sherlock frowned as he stepped new footprints over the old, wishing mildly that he wasn’t so poor as to not be able to afford better resources when he’d researched the possibilities that this Beast might turn out to be.

The front door was unlocked.  Sherlock tucked his hands into his coat pockets, finger tips brushing against the gun hidden away safely inside, and wandered into the house. 

The air inside was cool and dry, smelling faintly and rather pleasantly surprisingly of museums and libraries, but without the underlying chemical cleaners and too many people.  It didn’t smell, as he’d half assumed despite for the obvious clichés, of animals, blood or decomposing bodies.  It was dark but only in comparison to the bright sun outside, curtains open to let in generous amounts of light through the large bay windows.  Furniture somewhat sparse, but in handsome dark wood and through an open doorway Sherlock caught sight of a large bookshelf containing what looked promisingly like reference and scientific non-fiction.  Well, this was unexpected, in the best of ways.  He wandered towards the bookshelf into what appeared to be a living room.  Not many ornaments, those few pieces here and there placed either against the wall or on furniture out of the way.  There was no television - a stand that once held a television on, now with only books piled up on top of an old fashioned hi-fi system.

Nothing was dusty.  The books were pristine. 

(Someone cleans, regularly.  Beast, servants, family, magic?  ~~Beast~~ if hands were anything like feet from footprints.  Housekeeper, family, magic?)

The stuffing in the armchair was squashed to one side, not in the way a human sitting in it would cause, and multiple lines of tiny, neat stitches held together the fabric where there were rips and tears.  The sofa had been used but not nearly as much as the armchair, and was virtually new. 

( ~~family~~ only one individual uses the room.  Servants, magic?)

( ~~beast~~ couldn’t clean so delicately judging from claw marks on arm rests.  Would magic sew tears or would it remove them?  Servants, (magic)?)

(room regularly used, books kept and not read (no claw marks) but not removed from room.  Respect for books, illiterate, no desire to read?  Books introduced before Beast?  Human living in house turned to Beast, Beast invited in, Beast invaded?)

The drawers in the dresser were all partially open.  There were scratches in the varnish, reoccurring diagonals just under the rim of the drawers, and there were large gaps where the shelves were empty.  Dust remained in the corners of the higher shelves. 

( ~~magic~~ doubtful magic would be restricted to height bias.  Servants?)

(house designed for human inhabitation, not modified to suit non-humanoid.  Beast here for what purposes?  Why would not alter environment?  Unwillingness (sentimentality, respecting other’s unwillingness (though force or good-nature)), inability (physically, mentally, magic?)?)

Two holes in the wall where nails had once been.  More scratches on the side of the door facing the room, deeper than those in the dresser, four parallel lines dug deep into the woodwork.  The metal latch bolt in the door handle was dented, as was the corresponding strike plate in the doorframe. 

( ~~physically, mentally unable~~ removed some ornaments but not others.  Unwillingness (sentimentally, respecting other’s unwillingness (though force or good-nature)), inability (specific magic)?)

(strength, temper.)

(no attempts at repairing damage except for sewing in cloth.  Inability?  No resources except for basics - sewing kit?)

There was so much data.  Sherlock turned on his heel, trying to see more, feeling the exhaustion and hunger and fear drop away.

Because: _yes_.  This was what he lived for.  Sherlock felt a thrill run through him.  Even if he shot the Beast now, the house alone was a puzzle he could spend months on.  He started half-hoping the Beast, whatever it was, _would_ be violent and give him the solid excuse of shooting: then the game would be all the more difficult and he could take his time going over every clue in this giant mansion of a house.  Of course then the problem would be that he could never be quite sure if he was right or not, so that wouldn’t work. 

The floor was clean, no muddy footprints inside, human or otherwise.  Sherlock padded out of the living room and up the stairs.  Scuff marks at the bottom of the stairs where the heavy table had been moved to stand, squashed, in the corner of the hallway but away from the staircase.  Again, holes in the wall where there had been nails.  The corner of the rug at the top of the stairs was torn.  There were scuff marks down the walls and on the stairs. 

(marks resemble fall down the stairs.  Three times at least.  Table moved to avoid collision, pictures on wall taken down to avoid damage to them.)

(clumsy.  Unused to (human environment, non-human body)?  Naturally clumsy?  Pushed?)

There were four rooms, on the first floor all of them with open doors.  Two were storage and contained boxes of things, stacks of old furniture and paintings and small, tasteful bric-a-brac.  The missing ornaments, then.  One contained a bedroom, carefully decorated in a aesthetic non-style: creams and plain white, empty desk, empty wardrobe.  Bed made.

The other was a bathroom.  The bath and basin were dry as dust, had there been any dust present.  Quality yet nondescript toiletries lined a shelf, unisex but with a distinct male theme.  It might well have been a hotel suite - an expensive one, but a hotel nether the less.  Boring.

(expecting him.)

It was when he was back in the hall that he first heard something that indicated that he wasn’t quite alone.  Sherlock paused and listened to the scrape of footsteps, heavy physically by the sounds of the creaking but also careful, quiet and deliberate.  He put his hands back in his pockets, flicked the safety off of the gun, and took a step towards the staircase leading up. 

“Don’t go there.”

The voice was deep, rough, and sounded forced as if spoken through a damaged throat.  Sherlock turned.

The Beast was on the top of the stairway: an ungainly, solid and undeniably _dangerous-predator-threat_.  Sherlock couldn’t stop a hiss of surprise, even fear, slipping out even as he took the instinctive step backwards.  Even with all of his rationality, with the weight of the gun in his hand and the blatant indications to otherwise, the mere sight of the Beast shortcut almost all finer thought processes and went straight to his brain screaming: _run_.

Neither of them moved.  Sherlock forced his eyes to look over the creature again - being, not creature, clearly intelligent though the question as to what degree remained.  It was male, or at least it looked more male than female, its voice had been that of a man’s, but its head was something between a wild boar’s and a large dog’s, and Sherlock didn’t know whether boar or dogs were particularly dimorphic.  Protruding muzzle, flat, fur covered pig-like nose, undercut mouth with barely protruding tusks.  Massive forehead, small, black eyes that squinted and sloped downwards.  Cut on one prominent cheekbone, deep, previously stitched but sutures now removed.

About his own height, maybe shorter by an inch but easily twice as wide.  It had fur - short, bristly, dishwater blond over the head and darkening to brown on the body, ran through by a menagerie of scars.  It wore men’s clothes, split down the seams of the shoulders and sewn with patches underneath so to allow for larger than human shoulders and back.  Good enough quality but plain, several years old at least.  Jeans, faded and stained, cut off above the knee to allow for the backwards bend of animal legs, almost dog but not quite.  Paws, almost dog but not quite.  It had a tail, like a fox brush but as long and flexible as a cat’s.

It was _ugly_.  For all that he valued objectivity, Sherlock couldn’t look at the being and not see something repulsive. 

“Don’t go up there,”  the Beast said again, an awkward snarl in the shape of words.  There it was again.  _Predator_ , Sherlock’s mind shouted.  “You can stay in the rooms here and downstairs.”

There was a pause.  “I know there’s a gun in your pocket,”  the Beast said, measured, if something to similar to a snarl could be described as measured.  Sherlock kept his face straight, squeezed down on the fear creeping in his belly.  He pulled out his small handgun, holding it loosely and pointed at the floor.  The Beast didn’t flinch but stood very still, eyes on Sherlock’s, and when Sherlock switched safety on it seemed to sag a little, shoulders dropping.

And wasn’t that _interesting_.  The thrill of the game had almost been drowned out by coming face to hideous face with something he’d half assumed couldn’t actually exist, but it was starting to flare again, growing, reminding him of one of the main reasons he had left his dull, dull village in the first place.  In the tense silence that followed the Beast started forward, a lurch and ungainly walk, and Sherlock stepped quickly to the side to avoid contact.  He watched the Beast’s back as it moved up the stairs, out of sight, ending in the unmistakable sound of a closing door.  He made his way tentatively back to the bedroom.  His bedroom.  Sherlock sat at the desk, ignoring the weight of his gun and unsettled animal instincts, and thought, and deduced. 


	2. Chapter 2

The footsteps coming down the stairs were slow, pondering and sounded roughly estimate to a human trying to walk in shoes that were far too large.  When the shuffling stopped outside of his own room, Sherlock sat up quickly from where he was lying on his back on the bed.  The knock - two times, light, clearly heavily controlled and yet still sloppy - came unexpected.  Sherlock waited.

“Dinner,” the Beast said shortly.  “Downstairs.”  Without the body there to contradict it, the voice could almost be mistaken for a normal human’s.  There was another pause, as if waiting for Sherlock to say something, before the footsteps continued away and down the next flight of stairs, ambling into silence.  

Sherlock got up, smoothed down his coat and opened the door.  He wasn’t particularly hungry - at least, he was hungry but still at the stage where it was easily ignored - but it would be hardly conductive to sit in this room until he managed to turn crazy from the lack of anything to do.  Just so long as this didn’t turn out to be one of those horrible _you_ -are-dinner clichés, but under his new hypotheses it seemed highly unlikely.  There were seventeen steps - the Beast had taken them two at a time.  Downstairs the living room was empty, the same as when he’d first entered, and padding down the corridor Sherlock came into the dining room. 

It was a pleasant enough area, large and elegant in an understated sort of way, with plates of food on the table looking and smelling particularly appetising - yet it was completely secondary to the bent, ugly thing standing at the far end.  Sherlock stopped still, hated his instincts, and watched as the Beast turned and stared at him for a long moment.  He stared back.  It was the Beast who turned away first, sitting quickly and looking down with a cant to its large head.  “Help yourself,” it said, gesturing to the plates of food.  As if a nervous afterthought, it added:  “they’re all human foods.”

Sherlock already knew that, right from the moment he’d walked in, but he declined to say anything on the matter.  He sat also, on the opposite side of the table and four chairs away, and helped himself to a pasta dish, picking at it absently.  Home made.

In the corner of his eye he could see the Beast doing the same, clutching at the cutlery in its long, hand-like paws as if it were holding priceless yet faintly unpleasant antiques. 

“Your name?”  Sherlock said, weighing his fork between finger and thumb.  “You know mine.” He watched as the Beast chewed the piece of chicken it was eating, almost painfully deliberate.  There were long furrows above the tusks, pink and still raw, where the protruding teeth were cutting into soft lip. 

The Beast swallowed, looked to one side at the blank wall, not appearing to want to look directly at its guest.  “Who says I have a name?”  it said, and there was the unmistakable tone of challenge in the words.

Oh, if there was one thing Sherlock couldn’t turn down, it was a challenge.  “I was under the impression that almost all humans have a name,” he drawled, and was that new expression on the Beast’s face surprise?  Anger?  He couldn’t tell.  “Particularly if they wanted to join the army as a medic.”

“How do you know that?”  The words were sharper, louder, and Sherlock had a brief thought before he opened his mouth that it probably wasn’t a good idea to deliberately antagonise something so dangerous. 

“Obvious,” he said, anyway.  “Apart from the fact that you’re living in a human house, wearing human clothes - both things deeply impractical, you’re intelligent enough to know to alter your environment and yet you don’t, not because you can’t but because you don’t want to.  Why?  You have clear human mannerisms, impractical considering your body.  You picked up your cutlery as if having human hands, instantly switching to a more comfortable hold. When sitting down you sat first as how a human would before quickly moving into a position undoubtedly more compatible.  Muscle memory.  You were distracted, you reverted to how you learnt to and grew up acting - if you’d been trying to act human you would have started as you are now and then changed to the impractical.  You used to be human.  As for army medic - you not only realised that I had a gun but stayed calm at the sight of it, suggesting long exposure.  That you recognised without even looking closely I had switched the safety _on_ after removing it from my pocket - the illogical thing to do, most would assume the opposite of switching safety off - says that intimacy comes from extensive personal use.  Where would a person use a handgun to that level of familiarity?  Pistol shooting in sport, maybe, but the guns there are significantly different to the one I have now - and to those used in the military.  Army then.”

The Beast was watching him with an inscrutable expression but Sherlock couldn’t stop, despite half expecting to be attacked after every word.  “The wound on your face - professionally stitched, the person who did it has clearly been trained, had practice.  Perhaps it was the person who cleans the house, except for the similar wound on your left hand.  Again, professional technique, same person doing the sutures, but more rough than the ones on your face.  Logically if it had been another person those stitches would be identical or even superior.  Not easy stitching with only one hand, is it?”

Oh, he should stop, but now the words have started they could barely pause to breath and _this_ was what he lived for.  When he spoke the thoughts aligned and merged and things made _sense_ like nothing else did, and how could no one else see that this was the best thing in the world? 

“What happened?”  Sherlock asked.  His cutlery was set down and he’d long forgotten the food growing cold in front on him.  “Statistically it’s likely to be a so-called evil deed, as judged by the subjective magic folk.  This is your family home yet you’re the only one left.  Because or due to the magic?  Almost all personal effects have been removed - no photographs, paintings - but only from display, they’re still in storage.  Don’t want to get rid of them or can’t?  The ones that remain are placed carefully so not to be broken.  If the evil deed had been murder -” 

In hindsight, Sherlock supposed that perhaps he had spoken without thinking.  He didn’t typically care, not unless it affected him, and likely he should have taken into account the fact that if he was sharing this person’s home then it would definitely affect him.  Sherlock rubbed his forearm musingly as he attempted to heave the table upright, the action doing a little to restore order to the room but being more to measure the weight of the thing.  Sherlock gritted his teeth as the old wood groaned, banging down onto the floor and making the fallen crockery clatter where it lay.  The table was _heavy_ : one hundred kilograms, maybe a little less, the Beast must be stronger than even admittedly burly appearances went.

He was glad the table had been turned over away from him - merely catching his arm had been painful enough.  He could still feel the thrum of adrenaline and hear the raw inhuman snarl as the Beast had pushed the thing over and fled.  Sherlock ran a hand through his hair and grinned as he picked his way out and into the hallway.  Oh, this was just _brilliant_.


	3. Chapter 3

After dinner Sherlock returned to his designated room, and as the hours ticked on discovered to his extreme disappointment that the day would end in a manner so anticlimactic it was all but criminal. The temptation to go further upstairs was itching, under his skin and powerful after only four hours, five at the most. But upstairs happened to be where the Beast had stalked off to and didn’t appear to be returning from – and even knowing full well and not caring in the slightest about tact, Sherlock could see that toeing this line would be far from productive. He huffed, boredom picking at the edges of his thoughts. It was when he found himself resorting to rearranging the items in his room to do anything at all that he reached his limit – to come to a house like this only to rot in the most boring room in all of existence could only be explained by some sort of curse. Perhaps the whole building was permeated in bad luck magic, or whatever nonsense, and he’d been cursed along with the Beast merely by proxy.

That thought alone was enough to drive Sherlock out of his room and down the stairs, fingers tracing the clean lines of the banister. He had planned on exploring the rest of the house – if upstairs was expressively forbidden, nothing had been said at all on the downstairs. The hall, drawn clean cut in shadows in the evening light, led to the back of the house invitingly but Sherlock paused. He had, after all, more time on his hands than ever before, at least until the situation changed. He could look back there later, but now the most pressing issue was one he'd already glanced upon.

Was the bookcase in the living room really as promising as it had first appeared to be?

There were seven wide shelves each stacked with books, drawing him in. Sherlock ran the pad of his forefinger over the spines of one neat row, skim reading the titles. At least half were of little interest, he noted with a faint pang of disappointment: fiction, biographies, unimportant information, even travel guides. However that did leave the other half, and that alone was more than twice as many books as he currently had back at his father's house.

There was a large number of popular science books, mostly biological. Several fat volumes that looked like they'd originated from a university reading list. Medical reference books. A few physics, maths and chemistry texts thrown in for balance, a few more on the laws and general assumptions of magic. Sherlock picked up one paperback – the most promising which was closest to hand: Basic Toxicology: Fundamentals, Target Organs, and Risk Assessment – and let himself fall back onto the sofa with a grin of delight at the find.

With glee, as he opened the book to the first page, Sherlock was reminded distantly of just over a year ago the incidents following the death of his old laptop. He’d been unable to buy a new one – money hadn't been exactly forthcoming since he had no clients and his father's business had fallen to pieces (inevitable, the way he was running it – Mycroft could have taken over when he'd been twelve years of age and it would still be going now). Rent had been due, Father had been desperate and Mycroft nowhere to be seen.

Losing up his precious laptop had been painful. Even though they hadn't had a connection to the internet in months, even though the thing had been falling apart from age and being repaired one too many times by someone who had absolutely no idea what he was doing, he had sulked for well over a week. It hadn't ended until Mycroft's next visit from wherever he pissed off to twenty–nine days of the month (trying to deduce it had been one of the few things he couldn't ever calculate. Having a brother more of a genius than oneself alternated between brilliant and frustrating, though remained firmly on the latter side the majority of the time). Mycroft had sauntered into the house and after the tearful (on their father's part) reunion, when alone, Mycroft had casually handed over the Blackberry.

"Don't show Father," he'd said, dryly.

The sheer materialistic elation that phone had cultivated had made Sherlock swallow his pride and accept the present. It was that same fierce joy Sherlock could feel brewing up as he flicked through the index of this book.

Speaking of his phone, he really should send a text to someone back home to say that he was still alive, and not seeming to be in any immediate danger of death, mauling or some other terrible fate. Sherlock turned over the page. He would later. His phone was left in his coat pocket, which was upstairs.

He’d have time. Lots of it, probably.

Going from the meta–analysis he'd composed of all of the similar case studies that had been available while at home, there was around a seventy per cent chance this rather amiable kidnapping would last between one and three years. Sherlock supposed that in that time he'd be able to learn at least most of everything relevant here. Hopefully he’d be able to copy down everything else.

Better start sooner than later. He read.

.  
.

Sherlock woke slouched on the sofa, book resting on his stomach. It was early evening or late afternoon going by the light outside, and he blinked drowsily. There were birds singing outside. There seemed to be birds singing as a constant in this house, like background music that couldn't be turned off. A quick glance at the clock – ten to five. Damn. He must have fallen asleep sometime around noon, then, having read the whole night and following morning as well. It wasn't terribly surprising, if a little irritating that this was one more example of his body's needs getting the better of him. The book was almost finished, though, as he picked it up and flicked a couple of pages back to see just how much he'd manage to read on autopilot before he'd dropped off.

Sherlock wondered briefly whether there was an empty pad or something of the kind he could use to make notes in. It wouldn't be good, he supposed, to tear the blank and mostly blank pages out of other books to write on, then staple them all together. There wouldn't be enough, for a start. He hadn’t seen any staplers lying around anywhere either.

It was a few hours later, sun setting but casting just enough light to see with, when Sherlock paused in reading to listen to the shuffling thump of ungainly footsteps coming closer. He turned in time to see the door creak open and the Beast lurking on the other side, like something out of a bad horror film. Sherlock still tensed automatically, fingers tightening around the covers of his book without him realising.

"There's supper," the Beast said, grating out the words. "If you want it. You haven't eaten since last night."

"I wasn't hungry," Sherlock replied, even as he put the book down on the cushions and stood. It was probably best to avoid fainting spells whilst here. That and he still wanted to ask questions – what was the curse, who was the Beast, why he was here and other magic specifics – things that, irritatingly, couldn't usually be deduced from anything in the normal way, since magic rarely followed any logical pathways. He followed the Beast into the dining room, watching the deliberate step and controlled curl of the long tail in front of him.

It was very almost exactly the same as the last night, except for the fact that the food was different. They sat in silence and helped themselves, and Sherlock considered that it wasn't nearly as bad as when a child having to suffer through dinner with elderly relatives. Sherlock chewed on a slice of bread, dipping it into his soup. It was rather good food: homemade with expensive, quality ingredients, very clearly. Was there a cook as well as someone who cleaned, or was it just one rather hardworking person? Maybe the food was produced by magic. He doubted Waitrose would deliver here. In fact, ever since leaving the main roads on the journey here, he hadn’t seen a single sentient being, save for of course the Beast. There hadn’t been the sound of cars or aeroplanes.

(No people? People present but spelled invisible and inaudible (magic on them) (magic on him)?)

"John." The name was abrupt, bitten out in a snarl. Sherlock looked up to the Beast, who was glaring at the white tablecloth and clenching his cutlery stoically in his non–human manner. "Doctor John Watson. And Mrs Hudson is the housekeeper."

"Ah," said Sherlock, smug inside, taking another small bite and not allowing himself to smile. Human or not, he knew that expression, that tone of voice, and knew what was coming. Unexpected, deep down, was also the pleased, illogical thrill of being told the Beast's name. Sherlock told that to be quiet.

"How did you know?" the Beast continued.

"Know what?" Sherlock said, rested his elbows on the table, pressing his fingers together under his chin. The Beast – John Watson, but what an uninventive name – was staring at him. Or at least, he probably was. It was hard to tell when the iris was as dark as the pupil, and there was no white visible in his small eyes. Still, John was clearly a human, thought like a human, and could be manipulated as if human.

John made a noise, a short rumble in his throat or back of his nose. Likely irritation. His brow had creased a little, a half centimetre wrinkle above the bridge of the nose. "'The person who cleans the house'," he quoted, shortly. "How did you know it isn't, what, just magically self–cleaning?" It was the longest sentence he'd said so far, nothing that was what one would get from an AI, even a very good AI. It was to the point and human and wonderful.

Sherlock told him, leisurely; ('someone cleans, regularly. Beast, servants, family, magic? Not Beast if hands were anything like feet from footprints. Housekeeper, family, magic?'...). He watched and mapped the changes of expression playing over the Beast's face, which occurred probably more freely than was known. John – such a boring, common name for someone so fascinating – listened apparently intently. He didn't seem to smile, the one time his mouth twitched out and up he stopped quickly, likely because the motion was pulling on the cuts in his lips. But his eyebrows rose, fell and furrowed and densely furred, horse or dog–like ears twitched back and forth.

His response, when it came as Sherlock finished his explanation, was unexpected. "That's amazing," John said, and his deep, dragging–something–heavy–across–gravel voice sounded actually genuine. Sherlock paused, after a surprised second smiled, resisted the urge to preen – which was, he knew, irrational and unproductive and remarkably strong. Mycroft had never been particularly impressed by anything, let alone his baby brother; his father had always been too uncomfortable of deduced knowledge to be sincere in his praise. Of everyone else only Lestrade, Molly and Jim hadn't treated him like there was some sort of Personal Information faerie sitting on his shoulder and whispering into one ear.

It hadn't been that complex at all a puzzle, and the Beast thought it was amazing.

"She'll like you, Mrs Hudson. I think," John said, as neutral as Sherlock assumed could be possible in that voice. He was still eating, taking time to cut the food up into small pieces. He didn't seem to like being watched as he ate, stopping whenever he caught Sherlock staring – but Sherlock wanted to see his teeth, wanted to know whether they were human or animal, and if animal whether they were dog, boar or something else entirely.

“She’s been around for ages – Mrs Hudson, that is,” John continued, a little awkwardly. “She’s so polite and kind you forget she has the strangest sense of humour. She likes everyone – or at least she’s good at pretending to. But she’ll like you.” Now that he’d started talking the words were crumbling out of his animal mouth in odd sentences, eager and embarrassed to be heard all at once. “I think, she’ll like someone else around the house at all.”

John paused for a moment, watching Sherlock from the corner of one eye, and the room fell silent. He picked at his food. No hum of electrical equipment, no chords from the sort of chronic charms regularly found in domestic buildings. Where there none? Or where they just inaudible?

"You speak of Mrs Hudson informally," Sherlock said, unceremoniously. "Which is fair enough, I imagine, if you've lived together these past years – ages, as you say. She's present in the house now, who else would have cooked and set the table – but you haven't introduced us. Why is it that you're not so close as to eat and live together, yet you relate to her as an old friend, even a mother figure? If she was staying for you she would be here with us. In this situation I imagine anyone pleasant enough, servant or not, would be better company than no one. There was and is absolutely no sign of her physical presence – no fingerprints on the glass, no footprints, no noises whatsoever, yet she must have been here very recently, since I doubt it was you who laid the table. She was cursed with you, wasn't she? How?"

John had stopped eating by the second sentence of his little speech and was frowning, tilting his head so that his chin tucked down close to his chest. Sherlock considered in the brief moment of silence that he may have spoken too brightly for the situation and wouldn’t get an answer. Damn. He’d been too eager for data and had forgotten those rules for so called polite conversation.

"She's like a ghost," John said, eventually, but it was reluctant. He was nearing his limit of being pushed for the moment. "Invisible. She can't leave the house. She doesn't eat."

A ghost! Or, like a ghost. Had she died, or did she merely have the more common attributes of the dead?

(ghost-like: a significantly different curse to that of John’s. Why? Multiple attacks? Multiple attackers? Same attacker different curse manifestations? Unlikely to be cursed at different times, after first attack police and healers would have been called in. Unlikely to be multiple attackers, magic users of this skill rarely work together due to casting interference. Same attacker different curse manifestations? Only likely; not enough data, too many loopholes.)

"And you feel guilty about that," Sherlock stated. John snarled, displaying a row of small, sharp incisors between the tusks.

"Forgive me for not acting up to my appearance, but yes, I do happen to feel bad for causing the curse of an innocent person who was only in the wrong place at the wrong time." Silence, as John turned his head away, still grimacing. Sherlock realised belatedly that he had frozen, tensed in his chair, and embarrassed let out the breath he had been holding. "She doesn't speak to me much. Who would, to the person who got you cursed to be a slave for the rest of your life?"

( ~~multiple attacks, multiple attackers~~ John claims Mrs Hudson merely a bystander cursed because of his presence. Same attacker different curse manifestations.)

(different curse manifestations. A personalised attack, the curse manifest random, the curse manifest gone wrong? ~~The curse manifest random~~ this sort of strong magic required ability, skill, resources and concentration, not to mention being dangerous to everyone caster included: no one of that calibre would let it spread randomly. Personalised attack, the curse manifest gone wrong?)

( ~~the curse manifest gone wrong~~ no realistic route between the two manifestations ghost-like and physical morphology, two separate curses required at least. Personalised attack.)

(why?)

They left soon after, finishing the meal quickly and without another word. Sherlock went back into the living room to finish off the last few pages of his book and John returned upstairs, falling silent as if he weren’t there at all.

 

.  
.

The clock on the mantelpiece said twenty five past one when Sherlock picked himself up of the sofa, put his latest book onto the dresser – not so practical this time, but good none the less: Chemical Kinetics and Dynamics – and went to find the kitchen.

It was too dark to see by properly, Sherlock relying on memory and one hand outstretched to run along the wall not to trip over anything. As he passed the dining room he glanced inside to see an empty table, just visible from the moonlight outside. The hall ended in another door, the handle smooth and unlocked. Sherlock went in, closing the door being himself, and realised that the lights would have to go on if he were to see anything at all. With a small, deprecating smirk Sherlock reached out and ran his hands alone the door frame, searching for the light switch. So much for subtle, but oh well. It wasn’t as if he’d been told not to come in here.

The lights flickered on and Sherlock squinted against the yellow brightness. The kitchen was in the style of large and traditional, as fitting the rest of the house – wooden counters, tiled floor, a dresser piled high with crockery and tea sets. There was a multitude of pots, pans and the like stacked up to dry by the sink, and the chopping board left out was scored and discoloured with use.

After a few minutes the kettle was filled and put on, and Sherlock started to rifle through the cupboards in search of some teabags. Or tea leaves, he supposed, though he hoped not since he hadn't really much of an idea how to brew leaves. Tins in this cupboard, packets of dried beans and pasta in the next. Brands of those not available in multiple shops from both Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. Well stocked – actually prepared for the production of food. Best before date of bag of potatoes – one month’s time. Raw ingredients arrive magically and not the actual food. The house restoring it’s stocks seemed the most logical, simple answer (but Occam’s razor not always applying with magic).

"Top right, dear," a voice said behind him and Sherlock swung around. Ah, the elusive Mrs Hudson, most of the reason he'd bothered to get himself a drink in the first place. He looked at her, then blinked as his brain proceeded to inform him of the impossibility of the scene, and he couldn't help but stop to stare.

While John was admittedly alarming and unnatural by non–magical means, he still quite clearly obeyed at least most if not all of the laws of physics. Mrs Hudson, on the other hand, quite clearly wasn’t.

As far as he could see there was only a long skirt, shirt, cardigan and slippers in front of him, with nothing in between or holding the fabric into the person shape it was. He could see the inside of her shirt from down the hole her neck ought to be, and up the sleeves of her cardigan. The sleeves arranged themselves to point out then fold in at the elbow, ending a little way away from where hips would be on the skirt.

After a moment the bundle of clothes made a tutting sound, moving around and past him. A cupboard – one of the ones he had yet to poke around in – opened, door swinging out as if connected by five inches to the end of the cardigan sleeve. Sherlock supposed, as he watched a jar of tea bags open, a bag float out and drop into the cup he'd picked up off a mug tree, that it was connected. The clothes then ambled away to the kettle, which was still bubbling but had yet to turn itself off.

"Far too much water, young man. Sherlock, is it?" the voice said. Mrs Hudson sounded old (sixty?), a little tired but friendly, as if chastening an unruly but much loved grandchild. Her clothes were new, Sherlock noticed as he stared unashamedly. The slippers couldn't have been much older than a few months. Taken from storage, or bought recently? If Mrs Hudson couldn’t leave the house, bought recently would mean either John was going outside or someone else was coming in. Or did the house supply them with the food?

"It wastes electricity, you know," Mrs Hudson was still saying. "Not to mention taking thrice as long as necessary." She was pouring the hot water into his cup, something of a bizarre sight with the kettle dancing around in mid air, steam curling around an invisible form before disintegrating.

Sherlock waited in silence while his tea was made, then accepted it cautiously, unsure where to hold the cup as it was passed between them. "I didn't wake you up. Shouldn't you be asleep?" he asked, taking a sip. It was good. He watched Mrs Hudson’s form, fascinated. Was she invisible or not there at all? Did she produce warmth, consume oxygen?

"Oh no, I don't sleep much anymore. I suppose I don't need to. It's the spell, you see?" The clothes puttered around, putting away some of the crockery into the cupboards. "Here, sit down so I can have a chat with you, never mind the time," Mrs Hudson said, the arm of the cardigan making a vague motion towards the table.

"Spell and not curse?" Sherlock looked up from where he sat and absently took a biscuit from the Tupperware pushed in front of him.

"Well, I suppose it's a curse, really. That's what John says, bless him, and he'd be the one to know. Eat up, dear, you're much too thin. I have to say, it's not much of a curse to get to go about your daily life as normal, once you get used to appearances and all. My hip's better, that's for sure, and we never really got visitors in the first place." A dishcloth was picked up and the cutlery dried in it, silverware clinking together at the motion. "Still, it'll be nice with you around. Someone to talk to, you know. It can get rather lonely around here."

"What about John?" Sherlock asked, trying to pinpoint where Mrs Hudson's eyes would be. It was harder than he'd first assumed, what with her never standing still. "Isn't he here to talk to?"

"Oh, John." The clothes stopped, dishcloth slowing until it was rubbing repeating circles over the base of a saucepan. "I do try, but he gets so sad.” She breathed out: a heavy sigh, a regretful sound. “Sometimes I don't think he can hear me at all."


	4. Chapter 4

Unsurprisingly but irritatingly Sherlock had no signal on his mobile, not in the house nor within the garden parameters (and if he’d eyed the front gate with mistrust and not stepped near let alone through it, he’d made sure that no one had seen).  That discovery had ended with the phone thrown to the back of his wardrobe in disgust, switched off.  No point in wasting the batteries.  Without calendars or an electrical equivalent, he kept a note of the date in the back of his mind.

Somehow the days still bled together and the weeks passed quicker than they’d ever seemed to do before.

.

.

It was when he found himself in the kitchen for the third time that day that Sherlock grudgingly admitted that he must be in one of his hungry phases.  Sitting at the table with a heavy book on pathogens flattened open with one hand while the other held a bacon sandwich he blocked out Mrs Hudson’s chatter as she puttered around him, cutting vegetables and stirring the casserole bubbling on the stove.

He hadn’t really got around to studying many of the things in the house – Mrs Hudson’s insistence that she couldn’t leave, the unaccounted for appearance of food items, electricity, gas and water.  The curses.  He’d been here, oh, weeks now and he had the distant feeling that if he himself from a year ago had been able to see him as of now, past him would have been outraged.  Access to such a bank of knowledge and he was sitting down and eating?

Oh well.  He was in one of his hungry phases.  This book on pathogens was interesting.  He’d made some good use of the large garden and endless food supplies to do a few decomposition studies, standing in the mid-summer heat and cataloguing the species and instars of scavenging insect as they arrived and developed.  And he had no intentions of leaving any time soon.

(Mrs Hudson had near hollered when she’d found the mud tracks he’d left in the hallway.  John had looked down at the digging from his room (curtains moving position), but that dinner hadn’t asked what had been happening.  He’d fenced around the topic; he’d been trying to deduce for himself.  Even now, thinking back, that thought still made a stupid bubble of some emotion – pride?  why on earth pride? – swell in his chest.  It was only dampened by the way in which even after concluding and concluding correctly (“meat won’t rot nearly the same as a body if it’s lacking the gut”), John hadn’t moved any closer to the garden than the living room window (why?  What did he do in his room?  Why was the lack of answer to that question so disturbing?)).

Jotting down a couple of sentences onto the notepad John had allowed him to dig out from the boxes in one of the spare rooms, weeks ago (“I would myself, you know, but you should have seen the carnage the last time I tried”), Sherlock turned the page and saw to some disappointment the chapter ending.  Not enough time to get through another before dinner.  Pity John hadn’t been more into forensics and less into medicine – as interesting as it was, a lot of the terminology was beyond him, even with the aid of several relevant dictionaries.  Pity that instead of gas they couldn’t get the internet, or phone signal.

The clock read half seven, seconds tickling away abominably slowly.  It was dinner soon.  Not that he was hungry anymore, but dinner always meant –

Mrs Hudson chuckled and patted his shoulder.  “Staring at the clock won’t make the veg cook faster, dear.”  Sherlock shrugged out of her hand automatically – even if there was nothing wrong with the sensation per se, but being touched by someone invisible remained fundamentally odd.  “If you want to help you can lay the table.  He’ll be down before you know it.”

Sherlock didn’t move from his slouch except to whip his head away from the direction of the clock.  He hadn’t been staring, most certainly not, and if he had been he definitely had not been wishing the time away until John came downstairs.  There was just nothing immediately better to do than look at the clock.  Because most days John only came downstairs at dinner time, Mrs Hudson taking up his breakfast and lunch.  He likes his solitude she would say while clucking her tongue, as if explaining some chronic disease.

John was interesting to talk to, that was all.  And to study in general.  Who else had a cursed person amiable enough to let themselves be studied in close proximity as he did?

“You put that book of yours away before it gets food all over it,” Mrs Hudson was saying, rattling the cutlery.  “I’m serving up.”  Sherlock made a vague noise of acquiesce and slid off his chair, moving his book off the table in time for a trivet and tray of roast vegetables to be dumped there unceremoniously.  Serving dishes started to float and stack themselves around the housekeeper and Sherlock sidled out of the kitchen.  It would be a good few minutes until dinner was actually served and maybe even a few more until John appeared.  He padded into the living room, left the book on the dresser and tucked his notebook into his jacket pocket.

It was a new jacket, an expensive one, tailored exactly to size.  To say that it had been a pleasant surprise to find it and others neatly placed in his wardrobe a few days after he’d arrived would be an understatement.  They were beautiful.  Magic of course – Mrs Hudson suffered chronic neatness and wouldn’t have left his coat lying on the floor as it had been if she’d done it, while John could never have folded anything so cleanly. Sharp navy suits, crisp shirts, even silk and cotton pyjamas as if out of the pages of an outrageously priced, upmarket fashion magazine.

Sherlock had allowed himself to dress up and preen in front of the mirror, brushing away knots in his hair and imaginary dust from the jacket.  It had been years since he’d had enough money to waste it on clothes such as these, and years ago he hadn’t been particularly bothered with image.

“Oh,” John had said upon seeing him that dinner.  His ears had flickered forward, back and then forward again.  “Oh,” he’d said again.  “You, uh, look nice.”

He looked better than nice.  He looked absolutely stunning.  And yet he’d never felt so flattered before, a silly grin forming that refused to be wiped away.  His old clothes had remained folded up at the bottom of his wardrobe ever since, keeping his phone company, with the lone exception of the coat Mycroft had bought for him.

It was too hot to wear that now, though, outside or in.  When he’d arrived two month’s ago the house’s temperature had been the same as it was now, mid summer.  Room temperature, unerringly.  294.  Magic again?  Maybe.  Probably.  No sort of air conditioning in use.  Sherlock waited in the living room, slouched across the armchair and ran the pads of his fingertips along the carefully stitched tears in the material there.  He’d measured them earlier of course, weeks and weeks ago, calculated the width of John’s hand (or paw? He had opposable thumbs but the structure was admittedly more paw-like), made an average between that and the numerous other scratches on other pieces of furniture (it was 18.4 centimetres between fore and little finger, 25.7 including the thumb, with very little standard deviation when discounting the outliers). 

It wasn’t much data, 18.4 and 25.7 centimetres.  Sherlock still wanted to hold that hand in his, locate the joints under the thick fur, feel how sharp each of the claws were.  He wanted to know how rough the skin was on the thick pad of the palm, wanted to discover just what colour it was, if colour changed between the palm and underneath the fur.

He wanted to know exactly what muscles worked when John smiled – because he did smile: a crinkling around the eyes, a particular shape in the cheeks.  He wanted to know exactly what his laugh sounded like and what frequencies it covered, because the only times he’d heard it (a surprisingly high noise compared to the deepness of his speech), it had been short and over far, far too quickly.  He wanted to hear John shout and snarl because he’d encountered nothing else, nothing else in the world that was so exhilarating and frightening and set his heart racing double time.  He wanted to see John run as his body was designed to run – as a predator, not as John made himself on two backwards-bending knees.

He’d talked to John and somehow when talking the data didn’t seem to matter so much.  Of course, everything was data but why was he listening to John’s sixth form stories (“we had a hot water machine and free coffee, I actually built up a high enough tolerance level to caffeine that it never affected me at all for years...”), when he could be weaselling out of him details about the curse?

(“There was this one time in uni when we were all given a hex – just a tiny one, six words on an inch of paper – and we had to work it out and suggest a suitable medication or whatever.  All very regulated, obviously, but there were these two guys who hated each other – and I mean really, hated each other’s guts.  Padraic something, Barker I think, I forget the other one.  You can guess what happened.”

“And here I was thinking that those medical student stereotypes were myths.”

“Hah, yeah.  Well, they mostly are.  Depending on where you go to.”

“Barts, in your case.”

“... God, your little smirk.  It’s just screaming ‘I’m right, aren’t I.  Tell me I’m right’.”

“And am I?”

A grin, or the ears-eyes-cheeks equivalent.  “Of course you are, you berk.  Go on then, amaze me.”)

There was something in the back of his mind, a thought that was ever so slightly uncomfortable and one that Sherlock needless to say ignored.  It felt a little like dread, like he was doing something undefined he ought not to be.  Which was stupid of course.  He wondered if it was the fear of a good thing coming to an end.  Easily ignored.

John was coming down the stairs.  Sherlock sat bolt upright then let his body fall back down into its previous sprawl.  He glanced at the doorway, waiting for the familiar figure to appear there.  Seventeen awkward steps, then another four slightly less awkward.  John peered into the living room, a messy outline backlit from the hall light. 

“Mrs Hudson’s got supper ready, you know,” he said, a growling murmur, quiet by normal standards.  For some reason he disliked speaking at a reasonable level.

“Yes,” Sherlock said.  “I know.”  He got up, a graceful movement, rocking on the balls of his feet.  John’s eyes were pinned on him, undoubtedly despite the lack of indication from pupil and iris position in the absent white, for just a moment.  Sherlock found himself fighting back a smile and had no idea why he ought to be smiling in the first place.

Dinner was laid out as it was every evening, a veritable feast for two: roast chicken, potatoes and vegetables, a bottle of wine and on a serving trolley to the side two plates of delicate chocolate dessert. 

He’d be as fat as Mycroft sooner than later, Sherlock reflected as he sat down.  It wasn’t a particularly pleasant thought.  He set down his cutlery in favour of pressing the tips of his fingers together underneath his chin, watching John eat.  He drank the wine but John kept to water.  What did that imply?  Too many variables, though a couple of old wine stains in the living room table suggested a (careless?) drinker present in the house some time in the past.  Were the tusks warm or ambient temperature, or to what degree between the two?  And what would the optimum method of measuring that temperature be?

“You used to play a musical instrument,” he said and watched as John blinked and a smile worm its way around his eyes.  Skin around the lower lid bunching as the eye narrowed, crows feet only slightly visible under dishwater fur.  “Violin, was it?”  It was hardly a great deduction, he’d merely seen the music stand and books stacked away when he’d got his notebook.  The stand had marks in the paint, long claw marks characteristic of only John’s own belongings.

“No, not me.  I played the clarinet.  Just at school though, barely scraped my grade six.”  Sherlock pursed his lips, pouted at being wrong, and the smile around John’s black eyes deepened.  “It was, uh, one of my aunts who played the violin.  She lived here for a bit, years ago, back when she was finalising her divorce.  Left some of the things she couldn’t fit into her new flat.  The books, right?”

Sherlock hummed in reluctant admission and took an absent bite of potato.  “Quite,” he said.  The violin music had been mostly classical, varied between composers to the point where it was debatable whether the person who’d bought the music knew the first thing about any composer at all, or whether they’d bought any book with a famous name on that they could find.  Likely presents then.  No wonder she’d left them.  He hadn’t seen anything for the clarinet.

How embarrassing to have jumped to the wrong conclusion.  Why had he wanted John to play the violin, apart from the obvious fact that it was by far the most superior of instruments?  The clarinet was almost as good, though, he supposed.  Only grade six.  Oh well.

“What about you then,” John said.  “You seem the sort to play an instrument, probably obscenely well.  Something melodramatic.  Piano?  Or violin?”

Sherlock rested his elbows on the table and made a bowing motion with his fork.  “Violin,” he said.  “Soloist standard, when I can be bothered.”  John chuckled, a warm huffing noise. 

“Modest, aren’t you?” he said.  “I bet you are brilliant though.”

“Very,” Sherlock agreed.


	5. Chapter 5

Five months and he’d not even touched the second floor staircase. These was evidently something wrong with him, in this house, in the laziest summer he’d ever known. Well. Better late than never.

If it looks too easy or good to be true, it probably is. This was clearly bad advice, Sherlock mused as he climbed the stairs up to John’s room. Extraordinarily bad advice, unless the person receiving it was an idiot who regularly failed at even the most simple of things. Then again, that did seem to apply to most people in the world anyway.

John was downstairs in the kitchen and talking to - or being talked to by - Mrs Hudson. It had been easy enough to manipulate the situation to allow this to happen. Judging by the length of time their invisible housekeeper could talk at anything, let alone another person with the ability to nod and look interested (which polite John would undoubtedly be better at than Sherlock) there was an excellent possibility that John would continue to remain downstairs for at least another ten minutes. Likely double that. Far more than enough time for a little investigation. Honestly. This was far too easy.

There were two rooms on the second floor, a tightly closed window overlooking the garden. Wear in the carpet and marks in the doorknob and frame indicated which was John’s room. Quickly peering into the other showed that to be another spare bedroom, complete with cardboard boxes and dust sheets. Pastel colours, pinks, relatively large amount of clothing storage space, full length mirror, marks from high heeled shoes (female or feminine male inhabitant ( ~~feminine male~~ John had showed a large amount of bemusement at the retelling of his cross-dressing case)), (sister or mother. ~~Mother~~ John’s stories did not indicated parents having separate rooms). John’s sister. Where was she now?

Sherlock carefully closed the door behind him, backed into the corridor. There were far too many things in storage for just John, even when including Mrs Hudson, who had her own rooms in the back of the house, past the kitchen. And yet anyone moving out of the house would have taken their things with them, at the very least things of sentimentality of which there were lots. The packing appeared to all have happened at the same time (roughly same extent of dustiness, same low level of sun bleaching, same packaging material and methodology).

Not enough data. He needed more information, more concrete evidence that hadn’t been potentially tampered with by magic.

Mrs Hudson had seemed delighted to talk to John. This was partly because John was an excellent person to talk with, full of dry humour and actually intelligent things to say, at least in comparison to almost all of the rest of the world. Otherwise? She’d made it sound as if John never talked to anyone at all, not after the spell, which was clearly an exaggeration. Conformation bias perhaps.

Sherlock put his hand on the remaining door. He was wearing his gloves which he’d placed behind the cushions on John’s armchair a few days ago, together with a pair of socks pushed further down away from Mrs Hudson’s tidying habits. His clothes had been more problematic but he’d aired out his coat and this change of clothing, also suffering a scalding hot shower to steam them as best as possible. Truthfully he had no idea as to the sensitivity of John’s sense of smell but then dogs, which John at least superficially resembled in some aspects, were used to sniff out all sorts of things and undoubtedly would be able to determine if he’d been on the landing, let alone inside the actual room. Mrs Hudson didn’t use any heavily perfumed cleaners or soaps, but was that out of choice if it was the magic that caused them to appear, and even if a choice was it anything to do with John’s sense of smell?

At any rate, there was the distinct possibility that he had already given himself away and John would know the instant he came upstairs. No way around that one, not really. Sherlock pushed open the door (thin scratches, old (before John had learnt to push open doors with his knuckles as he did now)).

The room was small, exactly as expected considering the layout of the house and the size of the hallway and room next door. It was minimalistic with little in the way of furniture and next to nothing of anything else at all, which was also exactly as expected.

What was not expected was just about everything else.

John was one of those people who didn’t get attached unreasonably to belongings but none the less would remain completely stubborn about damage control. Probably the sort to preach about how to look after your belongings and they’ll look after you. He’d sound so disgruntled and yet guilty when he’d break the crockery or rip a new hole in a piece of cloth, which inevitably he would do and at least twice a week. Seeing it as a result of his physical limitations no doubt, or perhaps merely an incurable habit stemming from upbringing. As if every item was precious and broken pieces wouldn’t quite literally be magically replaced by the next morning.

None of that matched with the destruction inside the room.

A quick surveillance showed next to nothing that was not damaged in some way. There were cracks in the bedframe, the foot of the bed crooked as a clumsy attempt at reattaching it was hampered by splinters and distortion. The sheets were torn as if someone maniacal had taken a knife to them. The door to the wardrobe was loose on its hinges, one ledge of the bookshelf was snapped in two and was propped up by stacked books from the ledge underneath. The window was inexpertly taped where cracks radiated out in the panes. Tears in the wallpaper, long furrows in the carpet. Stains on the floor, on the desk (food and drink - tomato based sauces, fruit, tea. Small patches elsewhere that were almost definitely blood, accidentally spilt judging from the amount and splatter).

There were signs of John’s bad temper around the rest of the house - numerous ones, written out in bold for those who bothered to look, of course there were. Scuffs on the table and chair legs from heavy collisions, corresponding marks on the floor too far away and deep for furniture that had simply been knocked over. Patches on the wall that have been plastered over, new glass in the windows. Claw marks. Hairline cracks in otherwise solid wood. Yet these were subtle, sanded down and replaced or repaired. Tiny stitches and layers of paint hid them as best they could. They were nothing like this.

Sherlock paused for a second, and found that there was an unpleasantly anxious tightness in his throat. This was not what he had expected. And John lived in here?

A glance out of the window. Trees starting to turn autumn red, the garden, the passing road that really shouldn’t be empty but never had any traffic on it at all.

Only one place in the room showed any sign of true repair. Sherlock ignored the unease and crossed over to the desk. He grabbed a shred of cloth from the floor and used it to open the uppermost drawer. The wood moved smoothly: oiled, well practiced in the action. Hidden underneath some sheets of paper, one being a preservation charm (twelve lines, standard paper (emphasis on adverbs, larger margins and purple-black ink (iron gall ink) suggested manufacture by a member of the Hallam family (likely cost no more than seventy pounds)) common enough in middle class houses throughout the country) a was a gun.

Sherlock’s gloved fingers hovered over the dark metal as if drawn there magnetically. Oh. Fascinating. British Army Browning L9A1. It was virtually impossible to retain firearms from service in the army. Had John somehow managed it or was this one he’d sourced after returning (latter statistically more likely)? How? For what purpose? The gun was clean, meticulously so. In the drawer underneath there was cleaning equipment - cloths, bottles, a small brush. Judging from the oil on the cloth, the stains on the woodwork and the wear on the cloth itself, they’d been used well within the last week as well as multiple times before that.

Cleaned regularly. Merely a habit or was it necessary for it to be available for use at any given moment? The utter lack of anything else in John’s room that was maintained to any standard greater than basic working order, as well as the placement of the only charm he’d thus found in the house, suggested the latter. Why? What was there that required to be shot at? There was no sight of any ammunition other than the magazine that was already loaded. Wide use bullets, the code on the base stated: laced with trace iron, silver and produced over charms for the destruction of the most common of shields world over. Used in the army but unpopular in Britain due to the availability of bullets more suited to native grounds. Why wide use bullets? Why only one magazine?

There were laws about storage of ammunition, so ammunition supplies were stored in another place (unlikely: no real advantage of doing that here and John was ever practical. It was doubtful that John even had a gun licence, so further laws about the storage of ammunition were redundant).

The only reason John would have a gun would be to shoot either himself, Mrs Hudson or an intruder or guest. John had only ever spoken of and behaved towards Mrs Hudson with undisguised fondness, and while suffering from a cripplingly low self esteem he showed no symptoms of suicidal ideation or intention. Neither had Sherlock ever felt threatened by possible violence towards himself. John had shown anger at Sherlock’s father, apparent from the old man’s rather colourful retelling of their encounter, but again, no violence. Mrs Hudson might be suffering from good-natured delusion when she had stated before that John wouldn’t ever hurt anyone, but that was where the evidence was pointing.

Of course, not every intruder was the same. Sherlock hadn’t seen hide nor hair of anything or anyone else sentient for the entire time he’d lived here, but the possibility remained that there were others about that would require shooting.

Maybe even the one who'd cursed John in the first place. It was well known that many instances of magic were broken when the one who’d brought up the spell or charm to begin with was killed.

Maybe. Impossible to tell for sure. Damn, damn.

To what extent did army doctors use their weapons? Sherlock frowned; he didn’t know. Logically if John were to buy a gun illegally the best choice would be to get one that he was already familiar with, hence the army issue Browning. Why the wide use bullets? (they had come with the gun (both used by British army, logical if were smuggled in from the same source); they had been the only ones available (unlikely: wide use bullets were if anything harder to find); John required wide use bullets because he was either dealing with something non human or something he was not sure what would be effective against (likely (but why only one magazine? (only one had come with the gun or John required only a small number of bullets?))) (if he truly needed protection the gun wouldn’t be hidden away in an impractical place, unless the threat would not be immediate/a surprise (offence and not defence?))).

And also: why had John forbidden him from going upstairs in the first place? In the beginning it would have been understandable, but now? Did John just hate sharing his space (naturally territorial from curse? prior psychological issues?) or was there something he was hiding? The gun? Or something else? (for John’s safety? For Sherlock’s? For the item’s?)

At any rate, as nonviolent as John had turned out to be, Sherlock closed the drawer regretfully, cast one look around the room to make sure that nothing was notably changed from his entry, and left. It wouldn't do to be caught up here and Mrs Hudson could only talk for so long. Sherlock padded down the stairs and flopped down onto the bed in his own room, wriggling out of his coat and socks and shoving them with one foot to under the bed.

Well. How interesting. He had enough to work through now, then. This was rather excellent.

Easily to disregard the discomfort growing from seeing the state of John’s room. John wasn’t a child, he didn’t need to be told how to live. If he wanted it fixed he would have done so by now.

Better to think of more interesting matters. The gun. The missing family members. That now he could only wait until John went upstairs before he would find out whether he’d be caught out or not. Too bad he’d not stayed longer.

Still. As he tipped back his head and stared absently at the ceiling, wondering what John and Mrs Hudson were talking about, he dismissed any regret over being overly cautious with timing. There were far too many variables to accurately calculate a time. He’d be an idiot not to be overly cautious.

Seven minutes later, John went upstairs. Sherlock realised that his breath was caught in his throat and he released it, shaky. Why were his physical reactions so much greater than they should be? He knew he was in no danger. Why then the emphasised sympathetic reaction?

John’s footsteps paused in the hall before they entered the room. That was an anomaly. Ah well, Sherlock thought, as he laced his fingers together on his chest, not moving from where he lay supine. Maybe it’d be easier to get answers this way, with everything in the open. Footsteps again on the stairs, going down.

Sherlock tried to calculate the increase in his heart rate but somehow he kept losing count.

His door opened. Not with any large amount of force - it didn’t smash into the wall perpendicular, nor did it creak open slowly. John lingered in the doorway, not entering, and it wouldn’t take a detective to see that he was angry. Furious.

“Evening, John,” Sherlock said, pulse racing in his throat.


	6. Chapter 6

“Sherlock,” John said, tightly. There was a growl to his voice. Blunt accusation, no dancing about the bush here. “You were upstairs - when I was talking to Mrs Hudson. Just now. Looking through my things.”

“Was I?” Sherlock replied, higher than he would have liked. He continued to stare doggedly at the ceiling. It was white painted, turned yellow in the warmth of the light (traditional bulb, unlike others in the used rooms of the house (phased out in 2009) at least one year old. Average lifespan one thousand hours. For one year at the least no one has used this room for any real length of time). Had John discovered his scent (why was that thought so thrilling?), or had something else given him away? “Come to think of it, yes I was. I have to say, I’m not too keen on the whole tortured soul destruction theme you’ve got going.”

“This isn’t a joke,” John said: less tight, more raw, and took a step into the room. Sherlock sat up quickly, almost a reflex action, knees bending so to tuck his feet out of the way. “Look, I asked you - I made it perfectly clear. Not to go up there.” His chin had dipped down again, the fur on the bridge of his nose and around his neck was bristling. Sherlock couldn’t quite think of what he ought to say (what gave me away, I want to know (so I can do better next time)?). John’s eyes were narrowed. The curl of the snarl to his mouth was making his words slur ever so slightly, a significant deviation from his usual exact pronunciation.

“Sherlock!” John snapped, louder. His ears flickered forward before tilting towards the back of his heavy skull. “Are you even listening to me?” When he spoke his lips moved further and further up, exposing more of small tusks. Their bases were wet, glistening ever so slightly with saliva.

“No,” Sherlock found himself saying, unable to tear his eyes away. Truthful, at the very least. “No, not really.”

John snarled, deep from his chest, and Sherlock jolted, sat up a little straighter. “I can’t believe you - do you have any respect at all? I told you. Specifically. Do not go upstairs. What if it had been important - what if, I don’t know, going upstairs would have killed you?”

“Good thing it didn’t, then. Besides, I would have thought you’d have told me if that had been the case.”

“I would have thought you’d take my word for it! Me telling you! Do not. Go. Upstairs!” John was shouting, loud, deep enough that Sherlock could almost imagine he could feel the sound of it inside him.

“Must have slipped my mind,” Sherlock said, breathless. John took a step closer, just a small one, but by all the gods - wasn’t he brilliant? Bared teeth, bristling fur, backwards knees tensed - a self-conscious mind, wry, even pawky sense of humour, an army and surgeon’s training, magicked together. Impressed by even the smallest of deductions. Recent loss of family, isolation, quick to temper and so, so many secrets.

“It slipped your mind.” John’s voice had dropped, flat, dangerous. He took another step closer and Sherlock tilted his head back to keep John’s eyes in sight. “Excuse me if I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Of course,” Sherlock carried on, forcing the words blithe. “The real question is what you’re planning on doing with that gun of yours.”

Curled, clawed paws twitched violently, three feet from Sherlock’s face like an aborted movement of throwing hands in the air, and John made an inarticulate sound. Sherlock couldn’t stop himself from standing up, ready to run, own arms coming forwards as if anything he could do would be sufficient defence at all. He didn’t run, though. He had the vague idea that he was grinning.

“That’s not - that’s got nothing to do with anything!” John’s shoulders were tensed, muscles visibly bunching through the threadbare fabric and short fur. “The question is why you thought it would be hilarious to ignore the one thing - the only thing I asked you not to do this entire time.”

“Well,” Sherlock said. “Since I doubt you’re going to shoot me - don’t want to waste your bullets, now do you - what exactly can you do to stop me?”

John didn’t even answer that - John with clenched hands and fury in the furrow in his brow, with cheeks and lips bunched to show off sharp tusks. John: six foot of angry, inhumanly strong muscle, claw and teeth. More than strong enough to rip limb from limb. They stood eye to eye, the same height almost exactly, but John towered, breathing heavy, angry breaths.

He was stunning. Absolutely.

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “That. Rather predictable, given what you are. What you’ve managed to do to your bedroom.” He took a step forwards, acting without thought. “But you won’t, though.”

“Yeah?” The skin on the wide bridge of John’s nose was wrinkled, a perfect extension to the snarl written into his mouth. For a sudden, bizarre moment, Sherlock wanted to put his hand there just to see what it felt like.

Without thinking, he did. Sherlock placed his palm down onto John’s face, fingers stretched out across the width of the sloping muzzle to curl over onto the beginning of one cheek. John froze, holding his breath, completely still except for thick fur deflating, flattening to press against warm skin, tickling on Sherlock’s palm. The angry furrows disappeared. John’s ears were pinned back fully, pressed down against his scalp until they were barely visible in the long fur there.

“Sherlock -” John’s voice was suddenly quiet, a completely different aspect of tense. It felt almost as if he were shrinking under the light pressure of Sherlock’s hand. “Get off.”

The gently curved bone of John’s muzzle was hard under the skin. His fur was stiff, dense. John made a tiny motion, a duck of his head, but Sherlock dug his fingers in, not hard, and clung on. John took a step backwards and Sherlock followed, placed his other hand over the heavy ridge of John’s brow, running it up so that he held gently between his palm and curled fingers one of John’s ears. It shivered in his grip.

“Sherlock,” John said again, carefully controlled, higher pitched. “Get off me. Please.” For the first time, Sherlock could see white around the edges of his eyes.

“When was the last time someone touched you? You touched anyone?” Sherlock said, then: “Not since the curse. Not even Mrs Hudson.” He didn’t wait for a reply, but moved the hand off of John’s ear to follow the angular cheekbone, down the long jawbone, to hold in his fingertips John’s chin. He ran the pad of his thumb over the bottom row of incisors. “You’re ashamed,” he said, soft, barely a murmur.

John didn’t say anything. The breath from his mouth halted, but after a long second continued from his flat, boar-like nose, hot and damp on Sherlock’s wrist. John’s eyes - not black but dark brown, deep, rich brown - flickered between Sherlock’s, left to right, left to right, but didn’t break contact.

Oh. John had four tusks - one pair on the upper jaw, one on the lower. A total of twelve incisors, forward pointing. The upper tusks, where they protruded, were cool to the touch, and sharper than expected. His gums were dark in colour. There were two layers of fur: a scattering of dark bristles and under that a blond, short, dense layer. There were eleven scars scattered across John’s face, most visible only as small bald patches. Sherlock let his fingers burrow into the fur on John’s cheeks, where it was longest. It was prickly, and warm.

His heart was no longer too fast, but somehow had relocated itself up to the back of his mouth, too thick, too much in the way. Sherlock swallowed but it was stuck, sharp, missing in his ribcage. An achingly long moment and John stepped back, out of reach. Sherlock let him, hands trailing back down to his sides.

There was something missing, something that ought to have happened but hadn’t. What was missing? Sherlock let out the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding, unsteady, trying to find an answer in John’s black eyes (not black - brown, like old mahogany).

John was looking away. He opened his mouth, just a little, as if he were about to say something. He didn’t. Time stretched itself out.

John left the room, quiet, and Sherlock sat back down on his bed, still trying to push away the painful lump in his throat. He had all he wanted in this house. What was it, then, that was missing? What hadn’t happened?


	7. Chapter 7

Sherlock was lying on his front in the narrow space between his bed and the wall, staring at the dust collected on the skirting board, when the phone rang. It was almost a surprise. Almost. He continued to lie there, ignoring the persistent ringing downstairs in the hallway - useless answering it, no point at all, why bother doing anything? His spine twisted uncomfortably to fit his legs under the bed, one hip was pressed into the floor and going numb despite for the plush carpet.

The phone kept on ringing. And ringing. John thumped downstairs from his room, rough footsteps, hurried. He would reach the phone in two steps - one step - he was there, but the phone didn’t stop. Over the irritating, shrill tone John and Mrs Hudson were talking, words indistinct but clearly agitated.

They didn’t get a signal here. The phone line didn’t connect, the radio only played noise. No internet. He’d switched off his mobile when he’d realised, right at the beginning. Of course, even this far into the countryside there ought to have been a signal, had this been a normal house. Had this been a normal house there wouldn’t be a beast and ghost cursed to remain here.

Who was on the phone then? Too many possibilities. Stupid, stupid, useless. No point in knowing. Sherlock picked at a carpet fibre maliciously. Was John not picking the phone up or had he already done so and it simply wasn't connecting? Considering his haste to get downstairs likely the latter. No point in wasting time thinking about it, though; there were at least several obvious and equally possible situations for this anomaly - and who cared who was on the phone anyway, if there was anyone connected at all.

This whole house was stupid and backwards. Sherlock dropped his hand to squash the spray of fluff he’d pulled up from the carpet. Maybe he was missing home. Missing the logic and the way he’d know what had happened because it was always written out in every rational observation. The opposite of the way magic made everything wrong or ambiguous here. Maybe he missed solving crimes back at home, the triumph of getting proven right. Maybe he missed his makeshift laboratory. Missed Lestrade’s cases and experimenting on the not so legal cadavers in the mortuary. Even missed simpering Molly and her dubious excuse for a boyfriend.

Maybe he should just leave. There was undoubtedly some way he could get out, if there should be a problem in the way Mrs Hudson seemed adamant there was, at least for her. There were always loopholes.

Sherlock didn’t get up. The though of returning to his village where the most interesting crimes were petty feuds between old families, where even murders were dull, was about as appealing as a liver fluke infection. Like watching Anderson’s stupid weasel face for long periods of time. With Mycroft gone from the house he thought about sitting in his pokey little room waiting for something to happen (someone interesting to talk to), of days of black depression and blowing all the money he made on cigarettes or other, less legal substances, then shaky withdrawals until the next client and their money arrived, in endless repetition.

The phone continued to ring. Whoever was on the other end was bloody persistent. Either that or the device was malfunctioning and the whole house would be subjected to non-stop ringing forever after.

Sherlock rolled over and pulled himself onto the bed, where he let his limbs sprawl in a dramatic way that ought to have been satisfying but wasn’t. There was a bad taste in the back of his mouth. There was something that he’d messed up, somewhere alone the lines he’d done something wrong and badly (the feel of John’s face under his palm, the shiver of warm ears, dark brown eyes). He just couldn’t pin down what.

He didn’t want to leave. He’d have to be pried away from this house with a crowbar before he was ejected, and even then he’d only find a way to come back. The taste in his throat was thick and unpleasant. What if the house was unstable and if he left it would somehow be beyond him to return? What if he left and something bad happened to John? No. He wouldn’t leave. He couldn’t.He’d done something wrong but it wasn’t too late to fix it. He could still feel bristles and fur under his fingers.

The phone stopped ringing, finally. There was a click then the faintest of high-pitched hums, wavering. Sherlock was reminded of the squeal of a tape being rewound. Then, a new voice:

“You reached the Watson household,” it said. Adult male, well spoken (middle class), light in tone. Formal, for a personal answerphone message, but pleasant. Strange, why would the message be playing now? Sherlock sat up abruptly. He’d never heard this voice before and yet -

He remembered John laughing. An almost giggle, surprisingly high for the deepness of his speech. John, laughing.

Sherlock was off the bed and out of the door even as the realisation connected, jumping the steps three at a time. He stopped breathlessly half way down the staircase, hanging over the banister directly above the phone, subtlety be damned. “Unfortunately, no one’s available right now,” John was saying - John on the answerphone: old John, human John. “If you could leave a message, though, that’d be great. Thanks.”

Mrs Hudson was holding the phone handset loosely at waist height, letting the cord sway. The speakers were on, tinny but loud. John’s voice was an amiable tenor, whole octaves above what it was now. There was something in that voice that was making Sherlock absurdly aware of his heart beating, that made him want to curl around the words and play them again and again on endless repeat.

John was standing to one side, not looking at either Sherlock or Mrs Hudson. It was dark outside, slices of black and reflections in the slits between the drawn curtains. Had he really been lying on the floor for that long?

The phone beeped, a long tone in the quiet. The voice that came next was like a bucket of cold water to the face.

“The date is the eighteenth of July, two thousand and ten, at nine in the evening.” Mycroft said, genial in a business-like manner, and yet somehow also sombre. “Hello, Sherlock.”

It was still on answerphone. It was also far past July, autumn deepening into winter.

“Doctor Watson, Mrs Hudson. I hope you are well and that my brother is treating you fairly. Sherlock, these messages will go to the device closest to you that is capable of picking them up. Please turn on your phone,” Mycroft continued, before his tenor smoothed out, turned regretful. “However, to get to the point and if you will excuse my necessary brevity, I must inform you that father is in hospital. Cardiomyopathy, which lead to heart failure. I am no doctor and I can only pass on that which I was told - together with the complications it is expected that he has between one and five months left.”

There was a beat of silence. Sherlock couldn’t force his eyes away from the phone. The air was strangely calm.

“Both he and I would like to see you again, brother. I do know that’s easy for you to forget. However, I realise that it’s not so simple, never more so than now, with you where you are. Father knows this also.” There was a note to Mycroft’s voice that was foreign, a tender wistfulness that might well have been called vulnerability had this not been who it was talking. Sherlock thought, viciously: Mycroft was only acting because he knew that John would be listening in. Sherlock clung to that thought and didn’t regret the sentiment at all.

“I understand fully if you do not return to the house. At any time at all, you will be welcome back. If this message is late - I’m sorry.” There was another pause filled with a faint sound similar to the whining of electrical equipment, and a woman’s voice said something in the background, on the other end, too quiet to hear. “The disease is not genetic,” Mycroft said, neutrally. “I wish you the very best, Sherlock. Dr Watson, Mrs Hudson.”There was a click. The connection died. Sherlock tightened his grip on the banister. Eighteenth of July, Mycroft had called. He’d arrived on the seventh of June. It was now November. What date? Mid-November, or around then. He’d kept count at the beginning but in the last month had somehow forgotten. No, unforgivable. It was now fourteen days after the soup incident, and that had been ten days after he’d found John’s music stand and books. And fifteen days before that had been the twelfth of October.

Sixteenth of November. That was very almost three months after Mycroft had called. What was the probability that his father was already dead? He couldn’t quite think.

Those sorts of things were wrong all the time, though, weren’t they? The whole ‘you have so many months left’. It was just a guess, wasn’t it. People lived with hearth failure for years, if they had the right treatment. Mycroft would take care of that. Mycroft wouldn’t quote anything he didn’t think of as reliable, either.

“Oh, Sherlock,” Mrs Hudson was saying. “I’m so sorry.”

The message must have been magically transmitted. Somehow. Trust Mycroft to buy, bribe or blackmail a witch’s help.

“I’ll pack you your things,” Mrs Hudson said, putting down the phone and then dithering. From the way her sleeves arranged, she was wringing her hands. “It’s not too late to set off now, is it? There are night buses you can catch, only an hour or two walk away. Oh! The car, you can take the car if it’s still running.” She paused and it took Sherlock a second to realise that she was looking up the stairs at him. John was silent, just standing there, shoulders small as if crushed down into his back.

“I don’t know how to drive,” Sherlock said, before he could consider his words. But he couldn’t leave now. Not right now. “Tomorrow,” he found himself saying.

“Of course,” Mrs Hudson said immediately. She was still wringing her hands, now turning on the spot. “I’ll make you a tea, dear, or something stronger. Whatever you want.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll just -” he waved a hand up the stairs vaguely. “Go to my room. Sleep.” Because there was a sudden, sick realisation in his gut and Sherlock couldn’t stop looking at John, whose tail was wound tight around his legs and his chin tucked downwards. This would end up in him having to leave here, leave John, of course it would. He’d have to go back to the village and then what? Attend the funeral, deal with the will. Talk the exact same pity lead conversations with people who liked to think that they knew him or his father. Maybe he’d have a house dumped on his hands, and what would he do with that when all he’d want was to return to this house?

His father was probably already dead and what good would it do anyone if he left here now? He wouldn’t be able to help. At best he’d be able to watch as his father weakened and died before returning. At worse he’d arrive after the funeral and be forced endure the questioning on where he’d been all this time - or was that best? And what if he couldn’t find his way back to John’s house afterwards? Clearly there was some sort of regulation on what came in and out of the grounds. What if he left and that was it, no coming back? What if he left and on return found that something had happened to John and he hadn’t been there?

His mouth was dry as he went back up the stairs, flopping onto his bed and crawling under the covers without bothering to change his clothes. He couldn’t leave John. Not before he’d committed to memory every detail about him. Not even then. He still didn’t know what John’s hands felt like. His fingers itched to touch that fur again. Surely it’d be different on his cheeks to on his back, or the thick collar around his neck. He hadn’t asked whether John saw in trichromatic vision, or whether he was colour blind, and if so what type. He thought about his father, dead or dying, and of never seeing John again, ever.

.

.

Sherlock woke up late. The curtains were still open, he hadn’t bothered to close them the previous night, and the room was as bright as it ever was on a cloudy autumn day. The clock said twenty past eleven.

Downstairs he picked up the book he’s started reading the other day, fingers skimming over the cover as if trying to understand braille that wasn’t there. Sherlock stared at the pages but none of the words were registering. He bit the tip of his tongue, hard. Why couldn’t he bloody concentrate? There was a lump in his chest, making it hurt. Sherlock wondered if that was what it felt like to have something blocking his arteries, to have heart failure.

Clearly, that was a stupid thought. He bit his tongue again and started to read.

After a while Mrs Hudson came into the room. That was atypical but not so unlikely, particularly not, Sherlock supposed, given the current situation. She was speaking but easy enough to block out. Eventually he glanced up from his book and she was gone.

He skipped dinner for the first time since arriving, going into the kitchen to grab a handful of food to take back to his room. Sitting at his desk, waiting for the sound of footsteps that didn’t come, he realised that it the first time John had missed dinner as well.

.  
.

“Sherlock,” John said, from where he sat in his chair in the living room - and _that_ was an anomaly. He was sitting with his legs to one side, presumably so not to squash his tail, which was lying over the armrest, still except for the occasional twitch. He had Sherlock’s book under one hand, holding the thing delicately on his lap.

“Good morning,” Sherlock said, and wondered if it would be worth it to simply walk back out of the room. It was only too obvious as to what this was going to be about. He could already feel anxiety start to fidget in his gut. John looked like he was about to stand up then decided against it, shuffling the book around carefully. He looked at Sherlock and then down to the floor, then up again.

“When are you going?” John said and ah, good, straight to the point. Something to be approved of. Sherlock felt a bubble of relief at the bluntness, at not having to draw out this conversation in useless pleasantries or fencing.

“I’m not,” he replied, equally bluntly.

“What?” said John, and that was perhaps less commendable.

“I’m not going,” Sherlock repeated, taking a step into the room, following the wall if just to do something other than just standing. “I’m staying here.”

“Why?” John said. His voice was pitched low and quiet, and had an earnestness to it that was somehow uncomfortable to listen to. “Look, I know it’s - it’s frightening not even knowing if he’s still alive, and it might seem better just to never know if you’d be too late or not, but listen. You have to go. It’s your dad - your father. And this might be your last chance to speak with him.”

“How do I know I can come back? I don’t.” Sherlock found himself blurting, ignoring what John was saying surprising the both of them. “This house is still physically here but no one comes - not the postman, no one lost between nearby villages. No one drives along the road - it’s a perfectly good road and people must use it, but I’ve never seen a single car. How do I know I can even find here again if I leave?”“That’s not the point,” John managed after a long beat, head turning to follow Sherlock around the room. His tail was curling up, then straightened again as he stood. “This place doesn’t matter. But you can’t keep making up excuses to not go home. You’ll have to find out sooner or later - you can’t just never know.”

“I can, and _you’re_ not getting the point,” Sherlock snapped. “I don’t want to. I’m not going.”

“Stop being so childish!” There was anger, bubbling up in John’s words, and Sherlock shrank back just a little. “Your dad is out there, possibly dying and waiting for his son - and you’re too scared to go see him, to know whether he’s still alive or not? How the hell can you be so selfish?”

“I’m not going,” Sherlock started. That ought to have been enough, except that it wasn’t - and how could he explain it when John just didn’t understand? “I don’t want to go,” he echoed. He should have said: I don’t want to leave _you_.

“And I don’t want you to go either,” John hissed, drowning out anything Sherlock would have continued to say. “But it’s your dad! Your family, Sherlock! Even if you don’t want to face up to it now you’ll regret not going when it’s definitely too late!”

Sherlock stared at him, couldn’t say anything around the constriction in his throat. _I don’t want you to go either_ , John had said.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t get angry. I’m sorry. I just - I don’t want you to go,” John murmured again, gravelly, deep from his barrel chest. The admission sounded strung out and painful. “But you have to. It’s your family. Please, Sherlock.”

.  
.

The next morning, after breakfast, Sherlock tucked his coat further around himself as he walked down the driveway. The breeze was cold and stiff, and it felt as if he were leaving something like one of his organs behind, cut out during the night.


End file.
